UX/UI Designer Anastasia Krystopchuk spoke about a fraudulent hiring scheme she encountered while looking for a job. According to her, the fake company CarrotDevs published vacancies on Work.ua, conducted interviews and sent offers, after which it tried to gain access to candidates' bank details through an «onboarding platform.»
UX/UI Designer Anastasia Krystopchuk spoke about a fraudulent hiring scheme she encountered while looking for a job. According to her, the fake company CarrotDevs published vacancies on Work.ua, conducted interviews and sent offers, after which it tried to gain access to candidates' bank details through an «onboarding platform.»
The designer wrote about this on LinkedIn.
According to Anastasia, the vacancy seemed «too good to be true,» but the process didn’t arouse suspicion at first. After applying, an HR manager quickly responded and offered to complete a test task.
«The test was very easy and short, so I thought, what the heck, why not,» she writes.
After that, the candidate was scheduled for a technical interview. According to her, the «team leader» asked «really good questions,» so there were almost no doubts. Later, she was sent an offer — although, according to the designer, her test file was not even opened.
The first serious suspicions arose when the company asked to provide personal documents even before showing the employment contract. Additional concerns were a regular email address instead of a corporate one; an interview without a video from the company; the absence of people from the offer on LinkedIn; a «Canadian company» that recruits in Ukrainian through Work.ua; a website created on Webflow; and an AI-generated image in Telegram HR.
Later, Anastasia found another girl who had already fallen into this scheme. According to her, after the offer, candidates were transferred to the «onboarding» stage and asked to register on an internal platform.
There, it was alleged that a paid subscription was required to access the system. The company promised to compensate for the costs or advised to «not waste time» and pay for it yourself.
«The girl paid for a month, something like $7, but the point is different, now the platform has the card data and can debit as much as it wants and whenever,» the designer notes.
After that, according to her, company representatives stopped contacting her, and the candidate was informed that «cooperation would not work out.»
At the time of publication, dev.ua could not find any confirmation of the existence of CarrotDevs on LinkedIn or other open sources. It is also unknown how many people may have been affected by this scheme.
In the comments under the post, users note that recently there has been an increasing number of such «AI companies» with suspiciously fast hiring and minimal candidate vetting.
«Free cheese is only in a mousetrap,» the author of the post concluded.
In turn, Threads user sunflower_0.02, who Anastasia refers to, notes that after the interview she was transferred to the internal platform TheFamoso, where a «mentor» and «team lead» conducted onboarding. She was later informed that to access the internal wiki, she needed to sign up for a paid subscription.
«Need verification and pay for a wiki on their platform,» she wrote.
According to the girl, she was promised to compensate for the costs later, but was offered to pay for the access herself «so as not to waste time.» After that, she says, attempts to charge her card began.
At the time of publication, dev.ua could not find any confirmation of CarrotDevs' existence as a registered IT company. The brand’s social media is either not working or does not contain any signs of real activity.
dev.ua is ready to publish the company’s position and will contact the email address listed on the website for an official comment.
